Comments on: Mozy Backup + Reinstalling Windows = FAIL

By: Geeked

Geeked — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 07:02:00 +0000

I was about to swap to Backblaze too, then I look at the restrictions on backups. You cannot touch any ISOs or virtual machine files or any files over 9GB.
Unfortunately these mean I’ll give it a miss and keep looking. Watch out if you need to backup AV material that size limit could make it useless.

By: Brian Morgan

Brian Morgan — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:13:00 +0000

At the moment as far as I can tell I potentially have lost all of the data I backed up to Mozy. They tell me that my PC failed to back up the information, but in my account it said that there was 20Gb of information before I replaced it.

I am at a lost to what I will do if all of the pictures and videos of my family are lost, plus the other important data that I had.

The other thing that ticked me off initially is that Mozy doesn’t automatically back up zipped files unless you indicate all directories.

This is a “Mozy Nightmare” but I am still awake!

By: Harhem

Harhem — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:03:00 +0000

A few years ago i was looking at starting an off site data business and the cheapest planwould of started at around 40-50 / month. I was going offer full service including coming on site if you needed a full recovery and for the initail full back up. While doing my market research people would say why should i pay you that much when i can get it for less than $5. As a previous poster pointed out. There is a reason why it is so cheap

By: Harhem

Harhem — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:03:29 +0000

By: jonathan

jonathan — Mon, 03 May 2010 01:41:04 +0000

I just backup all my files to a VM of Win7 (Technet runing an a VMware host (vSphere 4.0 U1), sych data from many PCs via Robocopy, and keep appending diskspace to the VM when it needs more space. No local slow down, and I just throttle the bandwitch 9-5 while I am at work so I can RDP home w/o problems.. :)

By: pradeepsp

pradeepsp — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:57:23 +0000

I can add some perspective from personal experience. I have two drives on my primary workstation. Drive C: has about 18 GB of work files. Drive D: has images, movies, etc. to the tune of about 285 GB. For some reason, my D: drive went offline (SATA wire got unplugged). Mozy thought that my D: drive was out and it ran a sync backup and reported that I had only 18 GB backed up. I flipped out. I re-hooked up my D: drive and Mozy recognized everything and then seemed to proceed to re-upload all of the 285 GB of data from that drive. Well, what actually happens is that it recalculates some indices, etc., and brings your data back up to date. It initially took me over three weeks to upload all of that data, but the second “upload”, which was just a re-indexing, took only like 8 hours.

So yeah, the client and system seems to smart enough to know situations like this. I haven't tried this on an a full OS reinstall/upgrade, but I would expect it would work approximately the same way. The tech support person did not seem to understand how the product works.

By: smile man

smile man — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:26:02 +0000

Their Level 1 seems to be crappy (as mentioned), but if you get escalated, then you are taken care of well. The escalations/premium support guys know what they're doing, and if they don't know they're not afraid to say "Let me find out".

When you do a backup, any file that needs to backup has a hash (I guess is what you call it). If a file on their server has that same hash, then the file will not upload. That's why file path doesn't matter on a OS fresh install.

When you un-install, the local information of what files are backed up is removed. So when you re-install (or install on the new system), it has to try and backup everything. Reason it doesn't just go off of the list of files you've backed up in the past is because of changes. What if a file changed without the program knowing, and didn't back it up thinking it was already backed up? Bad things could happen! So it does a full backup, and files that already exist on the server is just encoded.

By: randomtech

randomtech — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:58:04 +0000

I am in the same position now – have to upgrade from Win7 RC to RTM. I hope Clint's approach above works! What a pain otherwise.

But I am intrigued – why is Backblaze better? You didn't say apart from the slowdown (which I have never experienced with Mozy)

Anyway I may be looking to switch from Mozy if my backups are not seamlessly switched over.

By: gadlen

gadlen — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:57:44 +0000

Crashplan has a pay service too. I'm using it and so far I like it. I'm glad you like Backblaze. Let's hope neither of us need to use our backup tools.

By: edrabbit

edrabbit — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:48:13 +0000

gadlen,

I switched to Backblaze and so far I've had a great experience. No computer slowdowns during backing up. I checked out Crashplan, but rather than rely on friends or family, I'd rather pay someone to keep my data safe.